Conditioning flavor preferences in rats: Dissecting the “medicine effect”

Learned avoidance of flavors signaling reduction in a nutrient.

“…Rats can acquire a preference for a flavor paired with recovery from the effects of a lithium injection or for one trained as a conditioned inhibitor with lithium serving as the U.S. (e.g., Best, Dunn, Batson, Meachum, & Nash, 1985; but see Delamater, Kruse, Marlin, & LoLordo, 1986); as indicated in Table 1, this is sometimes known as the medicine effect (e.g., Barker & Weaver, 1991). The phenomenon identified in the present study is indicated in the bottom right-hand cell of Table 1.…”